Cake is Thicker Than Water

- A harsh light leaks in through the crescent moons my eyes form, and pulls me closer to my body, though I don’t remember falling away from it in the first place. My toes are cold, and I cannot move, cannot speak, my sense of autonomy and I have become estranged once again. My left forearm aches, a new kind of pain that radiates from a skull-shaped scar at the center. To some it is just a funky-shaped mark, to my mother it is the symbol of a negligent medical practice, a reminder of ineptitude that I now carry with me. Though I am only five, I feel much older and wiser in this groggy haze. It’s amazing the things I can understand when I’m too afraid to ask where I am. My attention is pulled away from my discomfort by a soft, repetitive call and the touch of something cool and sticky to my lips; malaise is replaced by confusion, and then I realize. It is my mother calling my name, so gently it isn’t her voice anymore. She is feeding me an orange ice pop, then cherry, then orange again, alternating the flavor with every flutter of my eyelids. She offers no disapproval of the consumption of sugar, this time. There is no guilt to be felt. I am scared, and I am her daughter, and for that, this is my reward. Look how much she loves me. Look how much I am loved.

- It is a holiday, and the family is, begrudgingly, all together. They ask my about my teacher, and look at my scar, but neither interests them nearly as much as the new limits of my waistband. I am offered a cookie, double chocolate with peppermint chips, and I break off a piece. While they tug at my sweater, the hem of my skirt, I let it sit on my tongue and dissolve until it’s gone, gone, gone.

- The days have passed now, the protective blanket of my ailment has blown away like a tumbleweed and once again it is Brussels sprouts or bust. There will be no more ice pops, and that is that.

-During moments of listlessness, I find solace at my Grandparent’s house. There is movement in the kitchen, and I am grounded by the rustling of wax paper in a plastic package, the sudden spring of a toaster. My Poppy laughs, and with shoulders shaking, offers me a slice of American cheese; it’s an unnatural shade of yellow that matches the cartoon character on my t-shirt. She has superpowers, and sometimes I am convinced that I do, too. I say no to the cheese, but eat five slices of bread in its place. While humming a tune, I form a mountain of discarded crusts, much too big for me to climb.

- In my teens, I bake. Ruminating in a flurry of butter and powdered sugar, my whisk as my weapon. If anything is eaten, it is rarely by me; confections often go stale on the granite counter, met with disapproving glances. It’s not the finished product, but the rhythm of the kitchen I am interested in, anyway. The meditative hum of a Stan mixer and flour falling to the bottom of glass bowls with a plunk lulls me into a state where I can remember what it was like to be small, can see the remnants of a childhood spent in kitchens: a stay with an aunt who enlisted the help of the Pillsbury Dough Boy and Keebler Elves after her cat scratched up my legs in her narrow, wood-paneled foyer; she didn’t notice until I bled. Fighting for a seat at the table to get a better view of my Grandmother’s hands as she artfully peeled and chopped apples for her cobbler, waiting alongside cousins in earnest for any slices she could spare. Watching her children struggle in the wake of her passing to find a recipe that resembled the one that was written only in her head, long after the arthritis rendered her hands immobile and desert was purchased at ShopRite. A December Sunday spent making gingerbread houses from scratch with my mother, a tradition that would end with the death of her sister and birth of mine. We ate most of the dough before it reached the oven, playing salmonella roulette and giggling at the thrill. Mom and I living on the edge, wondering which of us would fall off first.